The Flo-Joe website for Cambridge exam preparation
by Fiona Joseph
Introduction
Each year the main suite Cambridge exams (PET, KET, FCE, CAE and CPE)
are administered across almost one hundred examination centres in Spain.
The much-feared examination day is the culmination of months of effort
on the part of exam candidates and their teachers. For those teachers
who are new to exam classes the pressures can be enormous and even if
you have many years of teaching under your belt the nature of exam classes
can be daunting. Not only do your students have high expectations of passing
with flying colours (I can still remember a recurring anxiety dream from
my early teaching career in which my entire FCE class would fail their
exam!), but you have to know the exam specifications inside out. Add to
that the task of finding a coursebook and practice materials that will
motivate and challenge your students for the duration of their exam course.
It's enough to panic the most robust of teachers!
This article gives a brief overview of the Flo-Joe website
and in particular those resources that can help busy and stressed out
teachers on the road to examination success.
Background to the Flo-Joe website
Flo-Joe (www.flo-joe.co.uk) was set up in April 2000 by two teachers/Cambridge
authors with a very simple aim: to provide a free online service for the
worldwide community of teachers and students preparing for Cambridge FCE
and CAE exams.
Flo-Joe now has a wide range of resources to help you,
the busy teacher, and your exam students. Indeed, Spain is now the seventh
largest user of the Flo-Joe site (out of 81 countries in all) and this
reflects the popularity of the Cambridge exams in Spain.
The website format has been so well-received that we plan to extend this
to cover the Proficiency exam in time for the first administration of
the revised CPE in December 2002.
Information and resources for the Teacher
1. About the exams http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/fce/teachers/about/index.htm
For each exam there is an overview and a summary of the individual papers.
The section on Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) is also worth dipping
into for quick answers to those questions that your students ask time
and time again, such as "Do I need to pass each paper to pass the
exam?" (the answer is no!), or "What percentage do I need to
get an A grade?" (it depends!).
2. Product Showcase http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/adverts/index.htm
With new exam books and materials constantly appearing on the market,
it can be difficult to keep up with new products. For up-to-date information
on preparation books and software our Product Showcase aims to give you
a list of some of the recently published materials from EFL Publishers.
We also provide quick links to the Cambridge-EFL website at UCLES (www.cambridge-efl.org.uk)
should you need to order sets of past papers, or the latest exam handbooks
and videos.
3. Teacher Talk Bulletin Board http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/fce/teachers/ttalk.htm
As teachers we all love to share ideas, whether it's by talking to colleagues
in the staff room, or going to conferences and training seminars. Flo-Joe
offers a channel of communication for new and experienced teachers - who
want to chat about any aspect of Cambridge exams - through our Teacher
Talk Bulletin Board. Asking a question or starting an online debate is
both fun and easy and once you've posted your message other users will
have the opportunity to reply to your posting. Previous discussion topics
have included "Is the FCE too anglocentric?" and "How popular
are the new BEC exams?" Some teachers have used this facility simply
to share experiences with other teachers around the world or to get help
on a research topic.
4. Resources Room http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/fce/teachers/resources/index.htm
The Resources Room contains a range of printable worksheets and resources
for your exam classes. Flo-Joe invites more experienced exam teachers
to share their favourite lessons with other teachers through our Teachers
Contributions page, the area where we publish 'tried and tested' ideas
for exam preparation classes. We were also privileged this year to be
able to run an online course in materials development for a small number
of exam teachers around the world, who communicated with partner countries
through email and a private bulletin board. The materials were published
on the Flo-Joe site and provided many teachers around the world with inspirational
ideas.
Resources for your students
Your students will find a range of free interactive exercises that can
be done in class time, or as guided or independent self-study. These include
step-by-step training for Paper 2 (Writing) of FCE and CAE, which is often
the paper in which exam candidates perform the least well. The Writing
Class provides an exam-style writing task each week, along with marking
criteria to help students understand what the examiner is looking for
in a 'good' answer, and a number of questions to guide them through the
writing process. Students are invited to send their completed task into
us and each fortnight a small number are selected and published on the
website in our Makeover section. Teachers tell us that the possibility
of publication is an excellent motivational tool for their students!
The other paper which we focus on in detail is Paper
3: 'Use of English' for FCE and 'English in Use' for CAE. Our Spotlight
on Paper 3 section highlights all the key grammar and vocabulary areas
that candidates need to have control of and provides a range of interactive
practice exercises.
For students who really need to improve their vocabulary
an additional boost is provided in the Word Bank, one of the most popular
areas of the website. This enables students to build their vocabulary
in three areas: phrasal verbs, collocation and word formation. Every day
there is a new example of each of these three key lexical areas. A free
newsletter is also sent out each week to students on our mailing list
containing a Word Bank revision test and some more exam tips. (The philosophy
behind the website is to encourage independent learners who will take
responsibility for their own learning by adopting good study and record-keeping
habits.)
Another well-used area of the site, especially in the
build-up to the FCE and CAE exams in June, December and March (FCE only),
is the Practice Tests for Paper 1 (Reading) and Paper 3. They appear as
interactive, self-marking tests in the Students Area but also contain
a Print Version if students want to do the tests offline first before
going online to enter and check their answers. The same tests are also
in the aforementioned Resources Room (with the Answer Key!) for teachers
who want to print them out and use them in the classroom. Increasingly,
students have internet access at home and so the resources can make an
excellent supplement to an exam preparation course.
We hope you will find the Flo-Joe site a useful resource
and we look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions as to how
we can satisfy the needs of Cambridge exam teachers and students.
Fiona Joseph is the Co-founder of Flo-Joe. Previously
she worked at a UK university as a lecturer in EFL and Linguistics. She
has also co-authored (with Peter Travis) a number of Cambridge exam books
including the Candidate series for FCE and CAE and, more recently, she
contributed to the Fast Track to CAE series. To find out more information
about Flo-Joe or subscribe to its free Teachers Newsletter send an email
to fiona@flo-joe.co.uk
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